“Your correspondence, Your Grace,” continued Tway, raising the salver a fraction higher, as if the neatly piled letters were an offering. “Do you still wish to make your replies now, or shall I put them aside for tomorrow?”
“Now,” said Brant without hesitation, dropping into an armchair with Jetty settling at his feet. He’d forgotten that he’d set aside this time for business, but the task of answering the requests and queries would help shift his thoughts from the girl. The same easy comprehension of the patterns, percentages and probability that made him so successful at the gaming table had carried over into investing and speculation, even into ungentlemanly trade, and earned him the wealth to match his peerage. “I doubt that there’s anything in there that will improve with age like a wheel of cheese.”
“Very well, Your Grace.” Tway nodded, setting the tray on the desk. He reached for the first letter on the stack and held it open before him, the corners pinched daintily between his thumbs and forefingers. “This first is from Mr. Samuel Lippit of the Pennyworth Mines.”
“Doubtless, Lippit is unhappy about my suggestions for improving the mine.” The Welsh tin mine was one of Brant’s newer business ventures, an experiment that seemed likely to cost him dearly before it turned a profit. “He has always seemed disinclined to make such investments, regardless of the returns they will produce.”
“Precisely so, Your Grace,” agreed Tway. “Shall I commence?”
“Please.” Brant, his legs more comfortably before him as Tway began reading the letter aloud. This was how he and Tway conducted all his correspondence, from detailed arrangements regarding his investments to the most intimate billets-doux from lady friends in London. In the beginning, Brant had claimed a weakness of the eyes prevented him from reading and writing, but he was sure that Tway had long ago deciphered the truth for himself. Yet nothing was ever said between them on the subject, any more than there was further discussion about the nearby cottage that Brant had provided for Tway’s aged mother. It was, in Brant’s opinion, a quite perfect arrangement.
Now Brant closed his eyes to help concentrate on the words that Tway was reading and to compose the proper response to dictate, the way he’d done countless times before. But, instead of that well-organized response, the only thing that kept stubbornly drifting into his thoughts was the girl’s elfin face, the way her tip-turned eyes had glowed when she’d challenged him, how their expression had softened when she’d asked after his dogs, how she—blast it all, she did not belong there, or here, or anywhere else at Claremont Hall!
“Forgive me, Your Grace?” asked Tway, his pen stilled over the letter. “I do not believe I heard you properly, Your Grace.”
“You damned well heard more than enough,” said Brant in enough of a growl to make Jetty’s ear perk. “Have there been any replies to our inquiries about the young lady?”
The corners of Tway’s thin-lipped mouth turned down with disappointment. “No, Your Grace. Not yet. But I should expect some response by dawn.”
“You’re not blathering it all over the county, are you?” demanded Brant with concern. “She’s a lady, you know, not some circus wire dancer with her face pasted on broadsides to the walls of stableyards.”
“Of course, Your Grace,” answered Tway, his voice determinedly soothing. “I have supervised every inquiry myself, Your Grace.”
“Mind you, no interfering sheriffs or magistrates, either.” The girl had already suffered enough without becoming the centerpiece of some sort of county scandal. Hell, for all he knew she already was—a rebellious daughter, perhaps, or an eloping heiress. Anything was possible.
“No, Your Grace. The lady’s name shall remain untrammeled by the public.”
“Very good, Tway,” said Brant, taking another deep breath. “I am reassured.”
But he wasn’t, not at all. He had always considered himself the model English gentleman where ladies were concerned, endlessly polite yet coolly distant. He was a peer, a man of the world. Yet here he was, fussing over this girl and her welfare as if she truly mattered to him, and the harder he tried to stop, the more willfully his foolish brain seemed drawn back to her. And having his dinner brought to her bedside, pretending there was some sort of friendship or intimacy between them—what manner of nonsense had that been?
He really was behaving like a witless ninny, and though he stopped his fingers from drumming on the arm of his chair as soon as he realized he was doing it, he wasn’t fast enough to escape Tway’s notice.
“Her family shall be found, Your Grace,” Tway continued in that same calming tone that Brant, in his present humor, could only find infuriating. “You may be sure of that. And might I say, Your Grace, that I am certain her family will be much gratified by your concern for her welfare?”
“You may say no such thing, Tway,” said Brant irritably. He’d taken the girl in because he couldn’t very well have left her there beneath the trees, not because he wished fame for doing good. Surely, Tway of all men should realize that. “You’ll ruin my reputation if you spread drivel like that.”
Unperturbed, Tway dipped his pen into the ink and waited expectedly over the half-written letter before him. “You were advising Mr. Lippit on the matter of reinforcing the north shaft with new timbers for the safety of the miners working within it.”
Tway was right, of course, in his characteristically roundabout way. What Brant needed to do was to focus on the work before him, on his genuine obligations. If he didn’t wish to make a babbling ass of himself again, then he’d have to be sure to keep away from the situations where it happened. Hadn’t he learned that in his first year in London? Didn’t he know by now that no woman—any woman—could hold a lasting place in his life, not if he wished to keep his secret and his sanity? Hadn’t he long ago decided never to wed and risk passing along his shameful disability to an innocent child?
He should be trusting his own hard-won experience, not his dogs. No more amusing himself with this girl in the guise of concern, and no more cozy bedside suppers as if she were his mistress, instead of an uninvited temporary guest.
He studied the stack of waiting letters with new resolve. “What else is there besides Lippit?”
“Lord Randolph and Lord Andrew wish your support for their bill, Your Grace,” continued Tway. “The overseer from your estate in Northumberland seeks approval for certain improvements, a gentleman inventor wishes you to invest in his new steam engine, and the usual ladies request the honor of your company for the usual invitations.”
Brant nodded with new determination. Surely that should be enough to make him forget a dozen girls with winsome smiles. “That is all, Tway?”
“Not quite, Your Grace.” He slid the last letter from the bottom, tipping it so that Brant could see the familiar seal for himself. “As was previously arranged, Your Grace, Captain His Lordship Claremont and her ladyship will be arriving here in a fortnight for the christening in the chapel, as will Lord and Lady Revell.”
Blast. How in blazes had he forgotten that particular obligation? When, soon after Valentine’s Day, his younger brother George and his wife had produced the first legitimate child in the next generation of Claremonts, Brant had expansively offered to have the boy baptized in the family chapel, with all due pomp and ritual. He was vastly fond of George and his youngest brother Revell, too, and delighted that both his brothers had finally found so much happiness in the last year, both with new brides. Besides,
